Tilt perception is different in the pitch and roll planes in human

Abstract

Neurophysiological tests probing the vestibulo-ocular, colic and spinal pathways are the gold standard to evaluate the vestibular system in clinics. In contrast, vestibular perception is rarely tested despite its potential usefulness in professional training and for the longitudinal follow-up of professionals dealing with complex man-machine interfaces, such as aircraft pilots. This is explored here using a helicopter flight simulator to probe the vestibular perception of pilots. The vestibular perception of nine professional helicopter pilots was tested using a full flight helicopter simulator. The cabin was tilted six times in roll and six times in pitch (-15°, -10°, -5°, 5°, 10° and 15°) while the pilots had no visual cue. The velocities of the outbound displacement of the cabin were kept below the threshold of the semicircular canal perception. After the completion of each movement, the pilots were asked to put the cabin back in the horizontal plane (still without visual cues). The order of the 12 trials was randomized with two additional control trials where the cabin stayed in the horizontal plane but rotated in yaw (-10° and +10°). Pilots were significantly more precise in roll (average error in roll: 1.15 ± 0.67°) than in pitch (average error in pitch: 2.89 ± 1.06°) (Wilcoxon signed-rank test: p < 0.01). However, we did not find a significant difference either between left and right roll tilts (p = 0.51) or between forward and backward pitch tilts (p = 0.59). Furthermore, we found that the accuracies were significantly biased with respect to the initial tilt. The greater the initial tilt was, the less precise the pilots were, although maintaining the direction of the tilt, meaning that the error can be expressed as a vestibular error gain in the ability to perceive the modification in the orientation. This significant result was found in both roll (Friedman test: p < 0.01) and pitch (p < 0.001). However, the pitch trend error was more prominent (gain = 0.77 vs gain = 0.93) than roll. This study is a first step in the determination of the perceptive-motor profile of pilots, which could be of major use for their training and their longitudinal follow-up. A similar protocol may also be useful in clinics to monitor the aging process of the otolith system with a simplified testing device.

Keywords: full flight simulator; motion perception; otoliths; perceptual threshold; pilot; semicircular canal; vestibular perception.

FIGURE 1

The EC135 cabin is in the display dome and the dome is over the six‐degrees‐of‐freedom motion platform. The pilot is seated in the cabin.

FIGURE 2

Examples for the ±15° pitch and roll tilts. All tilts were centered 2.6 m below the pilots' heads.

FIGURE 3

Example of motion displacement of the simulator cabin in the sagittal plane. There are three key moments: (a) Start of the outbound motion displacement toward 15°; (b) End of the outbound motion displacement, the pilot is now able to move the simulator; (c) The pilot stops moving the simulator, presses the button, and a few seconds later, the simulator goes back automatically to the neutral position on its own.

FIGURE 4

Trend of accuracy average for roll tilts. Negative tilts are left roll tilts; positive tilts are right roll tilts. This figure shows the trend of the accuracy average with respect to the initial tilt angle (averaged across every pilot) for roll tilts only. Even though the slope of the linear regression is small (0.068), we can see a clear tendency to bias with respect to the initial tilt: The greater the initial tilt angle, the less precise the pilots were, although maintaining the direction of the initial tilt. Furthermore, a Friedman test showed this bias is statistically significant (p < 0.01).

FIGURE 5

Trend of accuracy for pitch tilts. Negative tilts are backward pitch tilts; positive tilts are forward pitch tilts.This figure shows the same thing as Figure 4 but for pitch tilts. The result is the same but more prominent, here the slope of the linear regression is 0.22. A Friedman test also showed a statistically significant bias toward the initial tilt angle (p < 0.0001).